Popularized by the events of June 23, 2011, when the Senegalese people forced the regime of Abdoulaye Wade to back down, accused of wanting to rig the 2012 presidential elections while preparing for his son Karim Wade to come to power, an expression, "monarchical devolution," is now on everyone's lips in Senegal. What is it all about?
It is appropriate to look back and examine the public trajectory of Karim Wade to try to understand its meaning.
Before 2002 - In the biographical note on the official website of the ministry headed by Karim Wade, (1) it is stated that he "worked for about ten years in the Corporate Finance department of the investment bank UBS Warburg in London as an Associate Director." (2) Further on, the reader also learns: "In 2002, Karim Wade abandoned a very promising banking career to put his expertise at the service of his country." However, Karim Wade obtained a DESS in financial engineering in 1995, following a dissertation co-signed with his sister, (3) four years his junior, which never ceases to astonish his university friends.
According to the official information, we must therefore understand that Mr. Wade was employed at UBS Warburg as an Associate Director at least three years before obtaining his main degree, which is remarkable in every respect. Unfortunately, no curriculum vitae is available to date to shed precise light on the brilliant mind's career from 1995 to 2002, to be lenient. The heir's difficulties with his own biography thus begin very early. A family tropism (4) no doubt. This gross imprudence will mark the relationship with the Senegalese people of a man who became public in the wake of his father, having chosen to deny his own vulnerabilities by a flight forward.
2002 - Official arrival of Karim Wade at the Presidency of the Republic, as Advisor in charge of implementing "major projects."
2004 - Appointment as President of the National Agency for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (ANOCI) with the mission of preparing and organizing the eleventh OIC summit, (5) replacing the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was nevertheless the most appropriate with his services to ensure direct supervision of a diplomatic event of this magnitude. (6) Ill-intentioned people then saw in this appointment the President's desire to offer his son, thanks to the many infrastructure works planned in Dakar and the subsequent funding, a showcase and means to accede to the Dakar city hall, a prerequisite for a more ambitious destiny. (7)
2006 - Creation, with Abdoulaye Baldé, of the association "Generation of Concrete," a political movement within the Senegalese Democratic Party, marking the formal entry onto the national political scene of the President's son. It is essential to note here that although the official language of Senegal is French, Karim Wade was then unable to express himself publicly in Wolof, (8) the majority language in practice, by far the most spoken in all regions of the country. His political speech therefore had to be carried by others to reach the majority, and its echo had to be translated for him to understand its essence. In a country known for its love of words, this situation is incomprehensible.
2007 - Summons by the National Assembly to explain the delays in the works dedicated to the OIC and, more generally, the worrying management of ANOCI. Mr. Sall, the president of this chamber, was brutally dismissed from his functions by Abdoulaye Wade, notably following this affair. (9)
2008 - Holding of the OIC summit, under deplorable conditions of management, (10) organization, security (11) and infrastructure. (12) To such an extent that significant foreign delegations had practically no major political figures at their head. (13)
March 2009 - Defeat of the presidential camp in the regional, municipal and rural elections of March 22, 2009. Karim Wade, despite his personal involvement in the campaign within his movement Generation of Concrete, was soundly defeated in his own polling station in Dakar, at Point-E. The dream of the Dakar city hall, a stepping stone to the top, collapsed. The ascent, if it was to continue, would have to proceed without democratic legitimacy.
May 2009 - Two months after his resounding political failure, Karim Wade was made Minister of State, Minister of International Cooperation, Air Transport and Infrastructure. An unprecedented step in a country that had never seen, since its independence, the offspring of a sitting head of state given a ministerial portfolio. Symbolic of a defiance towards the Senegalese people but also towards his own presidential majority prey to internal power struggles, this decision was probably the most serious political error of Abdoulaye Wade.
June 2009 - Introduction of a position of Vice President, appointed by presidential decree, into the Senegalese Constitution. Presented as a significant advance for democracy by Abdoulaye Wade, the architect of this constitutional reform voted without delay by the Assembly, the post of Vice President has never been occupied to this day. For what reasons? Be that as it may, this phantom function, a toy of the Presidency (14) and without any necessity, would evolve in a worrying manner in a second phase, as we shall see.
November 2009 - The American representation in Senegal reported rumors concerning the preparation of a new constitutional amendment, the objective of which would be the elimination of the second round of presidential elections, to allow the victory of Abdoulaye Wade in 2012, given the defeat of his majority in the March 22 elections. (15) The succession of the head of state by his son is directly mentioned, several times and in various documents, by the US Embassy in Dakar.
October 2010 - Added to the many ministerial portfolios held by Karim Wade was that of Energy. The former head of ANOCI henceforth managed, according to a conservative estimate, a quarter of Senegal's state budget. (16) Given this situation, the special privileges granted to him (17) and an inevitably extraordinary access to the head of state, it is not excessive to suggest that Karim Wade then became de facto Prime Minister.
June 2011 - Abdoulaye Wade attempted to pass a constitutional reform overturning the electoral rules. In its first version, it proposed, on the one hand, the principle of a presidential "ticket" (president/vice president) eligible in the first round with only 25% of the votes cast, and, on the other hand, the succession of the president until the end of his term by the vice president in case of vacancy of power. Knowing that if the vice president elected on the presidential ticket, struck by bad fortune, were to resign or disappear, then the president would be entitled to appoint his replacement. This would therefore result for the latter, similar to what Gerald Ford's accession to the US presidency was, after the successive resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon, the possibility, in case of resignation or death of the head of state, of being thrust to the head of a country without ever having been elected. The expression "monarchical devolution" was then on everyone's lips in the alerted Dakar streets.
June 23, 2011 - The Senegalese, finding this project unbearable, besieged the National Assembly on the day of the vote, and scenes of violence broke out throughout Senegal. Following heated debates and under street pressure, the presidential majority, through the voice of its leader Doudou Wade, (18) refused to assume responsibility for the vote and deferred to the government. The frightened power retreated: the bill was withdrawn.
June 27, 2011 - A night of rioting erupted while some working-class neighborhoods had been without electricity for too long. It would give rise to a surreal telephone exchange, as we will see later.
July 3, 2011 - Karim Wade, Minister in charge of Energy, published an open letter to the Senegalese. (19) It was immediately ridiculed by the street, the vast majority of the national press and far beyond. Mr. Wade, having first stated that "yet nothing was given to me," presented himself as a victim: "Never in the history of Senegal has a public figure received so many blows, defamatory and outrageous statements." Having never in his life tasted the GMI's baton, (20) nor known imprisonment that many of his father's supporters experienced, and without mentioning the other torments they endured while in opposition, each will judge the heir's ego, historic as well. (21)
Moreover, magnanimous towards his detractors, "in accordance with our Senegalese values, I grant them my forgiveness," Karim Wade in his open letter rejected any idea of "monarchical devolution" in his and his father's mind. This, of course, could not be understood by evil detractors, ranging from "magicians of disinformation, to adherents of political propaganda, to manipulators of national and international public opinion." For, the martyr specifies, "power is not inherited; it is conquered through the ballot box." It all depends on the method.
Wanting to be elected president in the first round with the votes of one in four Senegalese while introducing a very strange vice-presidential post, as Abdoulaye Wade attempted, to the stupefaction of a great number of his own supporters, amounts, without prejudging the unconstitutionality of his candidacy, (22) to a gross insult to democracy.
July 6, 2011 - During an interview, Robert Bourgi, an emblematic and self-confessed figure of boutique Françafrique, claimed to have received, on the night of June 27-28, while riots raged in Dakar, a panicked telephone call from Karim Wade asking him to intercede with the French authorities to obtain an intervention by the French army. (23) A presidential prerogative (24) touching on the sovereignty of the state. A more than embarrassing situation that raises many questions about the minister's psychological stability, his role in the state apparatus, and the meaning of this wholesale abandonment of his "nephew" (25) by the missi dominici of ill-gotten African masks.
THE INFERNAL MECHANISM OF FAMILY ENCLOSURE
So it is to an uninterrupted rise to power of Abdoulaye Wade's son since 2002 that the Senegalese have been astonished witnesses, while in the same period they have seen their discontent towards him grow relentlessly, making him a hated figure at the beginning of the 2011 rainy season. (26) Dynastic temptation or not? The same nagging questions remain, despite the denials of the power:
1/ For what reasons does a politician as experienced as Abdoulaye Wade keep in the government, for so long, a man rejected politically even within his own camp, and sharply criticized for his manner of serving? (27)
2/ By what mystery, as his son's credibility collapses, does he entrust him with more and more governmental responsibilities with grim obstinacy, to the point of making him the first among his ministers?
3/ Consequently, what does the head of state prioritize: national interest or family interest?
Everything today suggests that Abdoulaye Wade, isolated and locked into a family strategy (28) with no way out, cannot alone overcome the narcissistic wound that removing from public affairs a son to whom he has given everything in order to make him his successor would constitute. Such an intimate disavowal would undoubtedly, in his eyes, sign a far too painful political testament.
By way of conclusion, here are two excerpts from what Abdoulaye Wade gave to the newspaper La Croix on July 22, 2011, a month after the forced withdrawal of his constitutional bill, under the threatening title "My departure would create a chaos worse than in Côte d'Ivoire":
"Is the Arab Spring rising in Senegal?
A.W.: In Arab countries, people mobilized against dictatorships. Their countries were characterized by an absence of freedom. Here, it is the excess of freedom that is at the origin of these troubles. This excess allows some to say and do anything against the regime."
"Do you see your son, Karim, as your successor?
A.W.: As my direct successor, no! It was stupid and insulting to think that I wanted to propose him as a candidate for the vice presidency. But no one can prevent him from running for president after my death. The prospect that he might one day become president of Senegal does not displease me. My son has great abilities. No one in the opposition has Karim's economic and financial competence."
* Amadou Amath is an academic
Source: http://pambazuka.org
